Seeing Behavior as Black, Brown, or White: Teachers’ Racial/Ethnic Bias in Perceptions of Routine Classroom Misbehavior

Abstract

Building on social psychological research on individual bias, this article uses the concept of “perceived blameworthiness” to investigate whether Black and Latino boys are perceived by teachers as being more culpable, or “blameworthy,” than White boys for objectively identical, routine classroom misbehavior at school. To isolate teacher bias from true differences in behavior, I use an original video experiment involving 1,339 teachers in 295 U.S. schools. Teachers in the experiment are randomly assigned to view and respond to a video of a White, Black, or Latino boy committing identical misbehavior. I find that Black boys experience teacher blaming bias, where they are perceived as being more “blameworthy” than White boys for identical misbehavior. Results for Latino boys are directionally similar to those for Black boys but do not reach statistical significance. Findings have implications for racialized assessments of behavior across a range of evaluative contexts.